


Submission nor Extinction

by gethouttahere



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Ending, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Destroy Ending, F/F, Indoctrination Theory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-14 16:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2198316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gethouttahere/pseuds/gethouttahere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the Reaper War at its end, Commander Shepard must win against an enemy that has wormed its way into her head. With her decision made, the consequences and a war-torn galaxy are hers to deal with.</p>
<p>This work uses elements from the Indoctrination Theory, and follows Shepard through the aftermath of Mass Effect 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Less Capable the Subject Becomes

**Author's Note:**

> The Shepard in this work is asexual, as is Liara, but there won't be much content about their relationship in the first few chapters. If you're looking for smut, you won't find it here.

Looking at the Catalyst, she felt a sickness deep in her bones—who was this kid, who haunted her dreams and waking nights for weeks? Why, _how_ did the Catalyst take his form? Something wasn't right, and as she turned from the ghostly child to survey her choices again, Shepard felt the deep wrongness within her fade away when she looked at only one choice. She remembered the Catalyst's explanation again, and one word replayed itself in her mind over, and over.

Synthesis.

It reminded her of something Saren once said, during their final battle on the Citadel all those years ago. _"Organic and machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. . . . The evolution of all organic life . . ."_

Shepard shook her head, compulsively, and stumbled back a step. Each movement made her headache flare, but the soft lights to her left and front—especially the green pillar of light—eased the pounding in her head and throughout her body. She looked back at the Catalyst, then at the blue control unit. Shepard remembered the desperation and power lust in the Illusive Man's eyes, the indoctrination rotting its way up his neck, the oily shadows tugging slick and sticky on her hands and clouding both her vision and judgement—and then she looked at the middle column of light again. She sighed, and whispered, "I'm sorry."

Shepard took a step to the right, and tripped. She pushed herself up again and continued to the red unit, her feet dragging and knees weak and arms dangling by her side. Her nausea and pain worsened as she progressed, and with each step her headache quaked and shook her swollen head. She felt like she was back on Earth, Rannoch, Tuchanka, dodging Reaper lasers as the ground beneath her trembled with each and every blow. But despite the pain, and the allure of the softer lights behind her, the commander pressed on.

How could she hope to control the Reapers, when that very desire failed the Illusive Man, and rotted him from the inside out? How could she choose to  _ evolve _ everyone and every thing in the galaxy, when she stopped Saren for those very intentions? No, it wasn't much of a choice, even as her body resisted itself every step of the way. Shepard raised her gun.  _ You don't want to do this _ , something whispered in the back of her mind.  _ It's not too late. _ For some reason, Shepard found herself glaring at the Reaper fleet around her, then back at the Catalyst. "Fuck off!" she shouted back, her voice hoarse and raw.  _ This is for Anderson, Liara, my crew and friends _ , she reminded herself through the pain.

Shepard took the first shot.

And then, for the first time since Harbinger's laser knocked her out, Shepard's vision became clear. No strange shadows slithering around her gaze. The only distortion came from a single tear in her eye.  _ I'm so, so sorry EDI . _ She took another shot.  _ This needs to be done right— _ she pulled the trigger— _ or not at all. _ The tear rolled down her cheek, and she shot again.

_“You, of all people, should understand what the Reapers are capable of. They cannot be stopped. Do not mire yourself in pointless revolt. Do not sacrifice everything for the sake of petty freedoms. . . .”_

Shepard fired the last shot as Saren's words echoed in her head. The console sparked and exploded, knocking her back as red flames under red light engulfed the end of the platform. She lost consciousness for the third time that night, but not before the dead turian's speech finished playing in her mind. The last thing she remembered before everything went dark was a deep rumble beneath her broken body, and an unknown noise reaching higher and higher in pitch.

_“The Protheans tried to fight, and they were utterly . . ._

 

_. . . destroyed.”_

 


	2. Wake Up in the Mourning Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Reapers are destroyed, but Shepard isn't safe yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for descriptions of blood and injury.

Stars. She saw those gleaming lights, like gems against the dark backdrop of space. Sunlight reached like celestial arms, rays bending towards her around the breadth of the planet below, a crowning halo. Like on Alchera—

_Alchera._ Shepard gasped, her shoulders shaking as a familiar terror set in. Disoriented, she tried to grab her throat. But instead she felt only pain, and her hands clawed against the cold metal ground. “Fuck!” she shouted, her voice hoarse. She glanced around; a fallen steel beam trapped her to the floor, crushing her left arm and leg. Part of the nearby wall had been blown down, opening the room to a view of Earth like a window. Only Earth, not the far-away planet where she had suffocated. A shimmer of blue across the gaping hole gave away the Citadel's (thankfully) still-operational mass effect field, and explained why she hadn't been spaced, again.

“Hey, did you hear that? I think I heard something over there!”

A distant voice—turian? krogan? she was too tired tell, only that it was alien—came from further in the Citadel, past the outer wreckage. Shepard tried to yell again, _please help_ , but her throat gurgled and she could only cough and spit, fresh blood.

Trapped, she assessed the damage. Her leg was caught under the beam, but it was lifted slightly. She could still move her leg, though it felt like her shin had shattered from the impact when the wall collapsed. This pain was nothing, though, compared to her arm. She tried to shift her shoulder to get a better view, but any movement felt like flames eating at her already-burned flesh. The beam's full weight was on her arm, crushing bone and splicing her skin and muscles. She was dimly aware that her pounding headache was gone, but she was dangerously lightheaded still. _I've lost too much blood. Shit._

Maneuvering delicately, Shepard managed to remove her leg out from under the beam. Pulling, twisting, shifting with utmost caution and care to avoid provoking her left arm, for what could have been hours or minutes, until she finally succeeded.Gasping, Shepard paused to let her body rest. She stared at the ceiling—this room wasn't the Catalyst's platform that she had been knocked out on, that she destroyed the Reapers on. It wasn't even the room below that where she had confronted the Illusive Man. Even with the catastrophic damage it was easy to tell that this place was different. The size of the room, slope of the ceiling . . . it was here that she came to after she went up the Conduit, and came out of the hallway, not that machinery-filled chasm. It must be. She could remember coming across a terminal in this room and trying to open the Citadel arms, and though she was alone there had been something—no, some _one_ telling her to stop.

It was here that she had felt the compulsion to take out her gun, where Harbinger's voice reverberated in her mind, the deep-feeling tremors forcing her hand to her head in anticipation for its deadly blow. It was here that she resisted, and pulled the trigger on her stomach instead— _on the left side, exactly where I shot Anderson. didn't I shoot Anderson?_ She had fought the invisible presence, and won at first, until it returned with renewed vigor. It was here that she was faced with a simple message on the terminal, _Crucible files updated. Would you like to launch?_ , and a child's voice in the back of her head. It nearly convinced her that she couldn't, shouldn't end the Reapers once and for all. She remembered defiance, and pushing the button.

But that couldn't be true. She also remembered Anderson, the Catalyst, the red and blue consoles and green pillar of light. Yet when she glanced down at her abdomen, there was a bullet wound on the left side, below the ribs. Fresh and oozing.

_I have to get out of here._

Her arm still would not budge. Shepard saw a solution, one made of desperation. And yet . . .

It was the only way. Her mind set, Shepard flared her biotics in the greatest display she could muster, and placed her glowing fist a few inches above her other arm, where metal connected with flesh.

_One. Two._

_Three._

She unleashed the warp. Unlike her leg, untrapping her arm was over in seconds. Every N7 had been trained to sacrifice a part of themselves for the sake of survival, or the mission. Yet very few had ever needed to. Shepard supposed she was one of the unlucky ones, again, as she rolled over and howled, shouts forcing themselves past her bloody throat and her last hand clinging to what remained of her left arm.

She didn't have the energy to try a tourniquet, but without a way to stop the bleeding . . . Shepard was afraid that she would finally see death again. What she would do, for even a dab of medigel in this hellhole. Ironic then, wasn't it, that Liara had always scolded her for not applying it often enough? Liara, with her little nose and shining blue eyes, always looking after the commander— _that's what Chakwas is_ for, Shepard would say, _and I'm sure applying first-aid in the field would make her job easier_ , her girlfriend would retort. But Shepard had sent her away.

She could hear the aliens coming closer, could even see the omni-light casting brightness and shadow among the twisted metal. Shepard could have sworn she heard their footsteps, but it just as easily could have been her heart pounding, pounding, relentlessly in her ear. Her one tie to life.

Clenching her jaw, Shepard pushed past the pain and blood, grabbed onto a piece of wreckage and pulled herself onto her right foot. She started to walk. She had to make it out alive, if not for herself then for her crew. For Liara.

Driving herself towards the mystery voices was the hardest thing she had ever done, and hoped to whatever god that it was the hardest thing she would ever have to do. Akuze seemed trivial, and escaping the Collector homeworld seemed like child's play by comparison. It took all of her strength, all of her determination, to drag her listless body forward even a few inches. Black and white flashed in her eyes, grainy vision like heavy sand slowing her feet and burying her thoughts in quiet storm. She found herself on her knees, then laying on her stomach with blood slick on her charred skin. Shepard stretched her remaining hand and tried to shout one last time, but her voice barely gurgled and the light ahead kept on moving. The voices faded away. Slowly, lucidly, she raised her head, but her eyes were already closed and her body already numb as she slumped down. Her blue lips, stained red, gave one last breath.

 


	3. There were children here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for self harm, thoughts of suicide, unreality.

 

_Solemn shadows against burning twigs in the dusk, or perhaps dawn. Beginnings and endings are one and the same here. No sun or moon, just a campfire flickering_

_smoke breathing, fire swaying_

_over old logs and dry bones, small. There is nothing for her here now, just would-be eyes in fiery flames, hallowed fingers in the twigs against her back._

_Still, she stays in silence, among the silent. And watches, among the watching._

 

_* * *_

It was two days before Shepard finally woke again, a slow rise to consciousness with machinery beeping and whizzing in the background, a feeling that had her convinced she was back in Miranda's lab on Lazarus station. Until, that is, she opened her eyes and saw the crumbling walls and crowded beds in place of clean white linoleum. She took her first conscious breath in days, guarding against the pain and savoring the feel of her chest rising, the smell of a dozen injured refugees and soldiers. She would take this over the acrid smell of burning metal any day, because the whispers and gasps of pain meant that these folks were alive. That she was alive.

“Commander, I see you're awake.” An asari doctor appeared at her side, fidgeting with the equipment. “How are you feeling?” Behind her, another doctor whispered to an assistant,  _ Go send a message to Admiral Hackett _ . 

_ Hackett is alive? _ Shepard's thoughts were still slow and muddled, her mind yet through the mist of her two days' sleep. She couldn't remember the danger that had made survival surprising, hers or the admiral's, but even with her heavy thoughts her breath still rose in uncertain hope. She glanced around the room—no familiar faces—before answering the doctor's question. “I'm okay. My chest hurts. How long was I out? And where's my crew?”

“You were unconscious when they brought you here, it's been almost two days,” the asari replied. “I'm sure your chest hurts, you broke six ribs—among other things. I can't give you any more painkillers, but let me know if the pain worsens.”

Despite her fatigue, she caught the doctor's evasiveness and her hope dissipated, her stomach dropping like a rock. She looked the doctor in the eye and said slowly, clearly, “Where is. My crew?”

“Now now, don't get yourself worried. You're awake, but far from recovered, you need to relax. That was quite a beating you took.”

_ Warped metal and searing flesh. Before that, a gun and a question like a thorn inside her head. A terminal with a simpler question, and an answer that she forced against hands of a ghost. Refusal and a gamble, but not without cost. _

Shepard came back into focus on the doctor's face, and managed a rough whisper, “Yeah. How did I—” She coughed, cutting off as she raised her hands to cover her mouth, but something was missing. Her left forearm, hand and all—she remembered the steel beam on her arm, thick blood and no escape. She remembered gritting her teeth, and letting loose her biotics in a way that she hoped she'd never, ever have to do again. She lay down her arms and closed her eyes, willing her stomach to be calm and her arm to regrow. Medigel could work miracles, but this was beyond that. Shepard had never lost a limb before.

At least, not while she was alive.

“Allied scouts from Sword were sent to find you, and they were not a moment too late.” Shepard could hear the doctor, still inspecting the medical equipment. “You've been through a lot.”

Shepard opened her eyes and looked at her right hand, and then to the stump on her other elbow. “Yeah.”

The asari leaned over, close enough for Shepard to see the sheen in her light blue skin, and said softly, “We'll get you through this, Commander. You saved us all, and now I'm going to do everything I can for you.” She straightened up. “I'm Dr. T'Aeli. If you need anything, Commander, just ask.” She walked away, jotting notes down on a datapad.

A hero. Always, always the hero. Even in this crowded room, Shepard was terribly alone.

Across the room, the doctor stopped to share notes with a couple of nurses. One of them, a human, asked, “I wonder what happened? On the Citadel?”

Dr. T'Aeli scolded him, saying “I won't have you asking her about that. She's my patient, and you're not going to traumatize her the day that she wakes up.”

“Understood, Dr. T'Aeli. I won't say a word around her.”

Shepard closed her eyes again, and let the glare from the ceiling light play across the inside of her eyelids. The pattern reminded her of a nebula. That was one thing she loved about space—the view. Watching distant starlight filter through the great expanse, purple and blues dancing from the nebula as her ship jumped down from FTL, silhouetted against glowing clouds and darkest night as she pulled into the dock.

_What happened on the Citadel?_

Now that she was fully awake, she could remember the Catalyst child and the Illusive Man's domination, the dead bodies lining dark hallways, and Anderson's final breath.

But . . .

A second layer of memory was starting to filter through, like when she woke up after the Crucible fired. She remembered hearing Anderson speaking to her, after coming up the beam, but after that she became . . . split, she supposed. Split between two realities, one where she limped through the chasm to Anderson, and another where she stumbled through doors until she found a terminal. One where the Illusive Man was lying in wait, and another where she was alone. The whispers from her dreams floated around her head, the last thoughts of a dozen dead friends detailing how she failed them, and one onerous voice ringing loud with how she could only continue to fail. How she should _let_ herself fail. _You must die. The cycle demands it. You are small, and your destruction is inevitable_. Harbinger thundered in her ear until she shot herself. Its voice was powerful and its suggestion tempting, but she resisted the deadly compulsion and pulled back her gun hand before giving in where she wouldn't die, at least not right away. She remembered weak knees and panicked breath. She remembered every muscle, every twitch in her hand as she pulled the trigger on herself below the ribs instead of the head, in an act of equal defiance and obedience.

And yet, the Illusive Man made her shoot Anderson in the other room, the other reality. Both of these memories were one in the same—and yet too different to account for.

Then she chased away the Reapers' lording tones for a moment of peace. Peace, so that she could use the terminal to open the Citadel's arms. Peace, before Hackett's static voice came through on her damaged omni-tool asking for more and she stumbled back up to the terminal's screen, displaying the message _Would you like to launch?_

There were more words on the screen, but she didn't remember what they said. She just remembered the words of Saren and the Illusive Man being repeated back to her in the voice of a child. The child from her dreams, the child that called itself the Catalyst. But it was not in that room with her, and Shepard began to wonder if it hadn't existed at all. The child told her that she could try to control the Reapers, if she altered the Crucible's launch files. It also told her that she could allow the harvest and uplift humanity to the pinnacle of evolution. Or she could launch the Crucible at the cost of herself, of EDI, and the geth. Were the voices telling her the truth? She survived, so maybe there was hope for the synthetics. But to have her own thoughts lie to her . . .

_Indoctrination_ . Shepard couldn't make herself say the word, even whisper it, but that was the only explanation.

It was not a pleasant one.

Perhaps the part that was most repulsive to her, what left her the most disturbed, was the thought that Anderson was already dead when she went up the beam. Her last words with the admiral? Were nothing but the imaginings of a crying girl.

_What happened?_

Shepard didn't know that she would ever be sure; both sets of memories were as real to her as the bandages tight against her healing skin, as the rough bricks lining the walls, rusty red in the dusty air. One of the injured soldiers said that this used to be a school— _my wife lived around the block_ , they told a nurse, _if we had kids we were going to send them here_. At that point, choked words and hushed mourning were as common in the makeshift hospital as sighs of relief. _If Liara and I settled down_ , Shepard wondered, _would it be in a city like this? or a beachhouse on Thessia?_ But she was just another soldier strapped to a cot, daydreaming about friends lost and fighting trauma endured. Still fighting, always fighting, even within her thoughts. Shepard just hoped that she wouldn't need to grieve for her wife, too. Even with her victory—especially with victory—she could not bear any more death.

So she lay in the repurposed classroom, forcing herself to walk through the dual memories and pick the truths from the Reaper-induced lies. Slowly but surely, her old headache came back, but she didn't stop. She had to know.

 


	4. A Visit From an Old Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The admiral finally makes a house-call.

_Six fractured ribs, simple fracture of the left tibia. Punctured liver. Ouch._

Shepard sighed and scrolled through the datapad. She had asked Dr. T'Aeli for a list of her injuries. The details were not very pleasant, but she was surprised that she hadn't sustained more wounds, and that she managed to not die with the injuries she had. _Good to know Cerberus rebuilt me to last._

She placed the datapad on her lap, and reached back with her right arm to feel the small divot at the base of her skull, underneath her thick hair, where a biotic amp should be. _Over-stress of L5x biotic implant, overload of and heat damage to Savant IX biotic amplifier. Recommend patient to avoid using biotic abilities until damaged tissue heals, biotic sensitivity recovers, and a new bio-amp can be installed._ Shepard sighed. She felt useless without her biotics. The one time she tried to create even the smallest tingle of a mass effect field after waking up, the back of her neck burned and she had a headache the rest of the day. _What do you humans not understand about a stressed implant?_ the doctor had scolded her. _No biotics for at least two weeks, or I'll find a way to confiscate your implant, too!_

No biotics for two weeks? Even after her injuries healed and she got a new amp, Dr. T'Aeli said that her biotics would be sensitive and fairly weak for a while. Shepard wondered whether, even once her strength was back to normal, if she would ever be able to channel her biotics through her left arm the way she used to. Without a hand it was nigh impossible for her to do anything precise, but once she got a prosthetic or clone replacement she hoped that it could sustain a proper field. Otherwise, well, she'd have to find a new strategy.

“Commander Shepard?” Shepard looked up and her hand dropped back into her lap as one of the nurses approached her. “Admiral Steven Hackett of the Alliance Navy is here to see you, ma'am.”

Hackett, visiting? She supposed that it was about time, and that he would have a lot of questions for her. She had just as many herself.

The last time Hackett had come to visit her in a medbay, it had been after the destruction of Aratoht and the Alpha relay. Then, the situation had made perfect sense to Shepard but no sense from the outside perspective. Now, it was the other way around.

The admiral strolled into the room not far behind the nurse and stopped at the foot of her bed, back straight and hands clasped behind him. “I heard you were awake. Commander, you're a damn hero.”

Shepard couldn't help but smile. “Glad to hear so, sir.”

“That was quite a thing you did, Shepard. You're a miracle worker.” The lines around Hackett's eyes relaxed, but his face remained as serious as ever. “How are you doing?”

“Could be better. Broken bones, overloaded implant. Missing arm, too.” Shepard tried to be light-hearted, but she couldn't help but wince. “And I think I lost my omni-tool.”

“We'll get you a replacement. I'm glad to see you're trying to keep your sense of humor, I think we all need a bit of that.” Hackett's gaze became more intense, and Shepard broke eye contact. “You saved this whole damn galaxy, Shepard. Now we need to pick up the pieces, and get on with our lives.”

“Yes, sir. What exactly are the pieces we need to pick up? How many casualties are there?”

Hackett said, “Most of Hammer was wiped out, and half of Sword. Shield remained largely intact. As for civilians, we can't be sure yet. We lost contact with the Council shortly after the Reapers took the Citadel, and most areas of the Citadel have complete loss of life support, though we are finding pockets of survivors. I'm not sure about the losses in other systems. It's going to take time to rebuild the comm buoy system, so for now the only interstellar communication we have is via the few QECs still working.” He cleared his throat. “The pulse that the Crucible emitted temporarily disabled most technology, but restoring power to the ships has been fairly easy, if time consuming. And Commander . . .” He cleared his throat again, and leaned forward intently, carrying the heavy weight of his next words in his eyes. “Shepard, I don't know if you were told, but Admiral Anderson was killed in action on the charge to the beam. We couldn't save him.”

Her breath caught and she gripped the edge of her bed tightly, steadying herself against pressing tears. Some part of her had already known, but another part of her wanted desperately for the last words she remembered sharing with Anderson on the Citadel to have been truth. “I . . assumed. I'm sorry, sir. Anderson will be missed.” Shepard kept staring intently at her lap, struggling to change the subject before her grief burst forth like a damn breaking. She settled on a question that had been bothering her since she woke up. “What about the damage to the relays?”

“The Crucible didn't damage the relays at all, thankfully. If it had, we'd all be dead in the water, or just plain dead.” Hackett met her gaze, carefully. “Did someone tell you that the relays were damaged?”

“No sir, I just—thought I'd make sure.” That was one of her largest worries down, and one more to go. She had to be sure that everything the Catalyst said to her was a lie. “Are—um, are the geth okay?”

“Yes, they're fine. They took heavy casualties, but no more than any other fleet. In fact, the geth have been instrumental in restoring the fleets and building shelters on the ground. Why?”

Shepard inhaled slowly. If she survived, and the geth survived, then maybe there was hope for EDI. “Okay. Okay.” She couldn't bring herself to look the admiral in the eye—eyes reminded her of talking down the Illusive Man, of Anderson's last words— _I'm proud of you, child—_ as the life faded from his own, of words that weren't spoken at all and life that was already gone. She focused on her remaining hand, feeling her fingertips rub together and gently against the burns on her palm. The pain was real, and so she grounded herself in her hand, safe now with no gun to shoot or button to press.

“Commander, I need you to tell me what happened up there.” When Shepard didn't respond, Hackett sat down in the metal chair next to her bed, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Shepard. If you can tell me what happened on the Citadel . . .”

“I can't, sir, I'm sorry.” Hackett continued to stare at Shepard with a little disappointment, so she forced herself to turn and meet his gaze. “I really can't sir, I don't remember all of what happened. And what I do . . .” Shepard sighed, and forced the words out of her mouth. “I think I was indoctrinated. I remember things, things that couldn't have happened, things that almost convinced me that we shouldn't kill the Reapers. I'm sorry, sir. I failed.”

“You didn't fail, Shepard. You pulled through and destroyed those damned machines, you fought against whatever happened and won.” He leaned in closer, and said, “Listen to me. I want you to stay here and get better. We've won, and your only orders now are to heal. Understand?”

Shepard wiped a tear from her eye, and nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you. One more thing, if I may. I remember ordering the Normandy offworld and, well, I haven't seen any of my crew. Have you heard from them?”

Hackett hesitated. “What have you heard?”

Shepard shook her head. “Nothing, sir. When I asked, the doctor said something about avoiding stress for my health, and didn't answer.”

“The Normandy is MIA. Lieutenant Vega stayed behind when your ship evacuated and is in the city now, but we haven't heard from any of the other crew—Alliance or otherwise—since the Crucible fired. I'm sorry, Commander.”

Shepard buried her face in her hand, restraint be damned. She had assumed the worst, but she couldn't lose her squad again. They were her friends, her family. And Liara—Shepard dared herself to hope. An MIA wasn't definitive, and even though she hated the uncertainty it was better than the alternative. _At least James is safe._ She tried to clear the roughness from her throat, and said, “If there's any news about the Normandy, let me know sir. Please.”

“Of course. Get well, Shepard.” The admiral stood up, and Shepard saluted before he left the crowded room, leaving her with her thoughts.

She sent them away. It was her fault—it was always her fault, whenever she and her crew were separated, whenever their friendships began to fall apart and fray like an old blanket. Alchera, her trial, London. She was always to blame, when crew and commander were forced apart. This was no different.

Garrus once told her that she was the common denominator, she was the gravity that pulled her crew together and inspired loyalty and trust. But now, the evidence was undeniable—Shepard was the opposite, she was alone in this hospital by her own doing. If she killed them . . .

Each of their faces passed before her eyes, most blood-covered as she last saw them in the battle.  _ EDI, grimy stains all along her metal skin. Garrus, Tali, standing before her in the FOB, always believing in her. Ash with blood streaks in her hair, Joker saluting on the bridge, Liara begging to stay with her— _

She couldn't lose her crew, not again. This would be worse than Akuze. All that she could relearn after the maw attack was how to fight as a soldier, but it was Ashley and Tali who taught her how to fight as a friend. It was EDI who taught her how to redefine humanity, and Liara who gave her the tools to trust again, who showed her how to find solace in those vulnerable moments late at night. Liara, whom she loved.

Dr. T'Aeli's skin tone was almost identical to Liara's soft blue, and Shepard couldn't help but think of her bondmate each time the doctor came over to check on her. It reminded her of the early days on the SR1, when Shepard would visit the soft-spoken asari in her room behind the medbay. It was there that their feelings for each other grew and their friendship flourished, over time. Liara was the first person she had confided in for years. Sure, she always cared for her crew and engaged with them, but it was this young asari scientist who opened her heart and allowed Shepard to share her own story. And then it trickled down to Ashley, to Kaidan and Tali, to Wrex and Garrus, to the crews of the SR2.

She wanted to have that with Liara again. She needed to. _This will not be the end_. Shepard refused to celebrate her win against the Reapers alone.

 


End file.
